


The Art Of Sherlock Holmes

by pulangaraw



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-25
Updated: 2010-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-14 02:42:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pulangaraw/pseuds/pulangaraw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John discovers something in Sherlock's closet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art Of Sherlock Holmes

**Author's Note:**

> Caers linked me to [these awesome china dolls](http://www.jessicaharrison.co.uk/page5.htm) and mentioned something about Sherlock having them. The rest is history. :)
> 
>  
> 
> Santheum made [art for it](http://wihluta.livejournal.com/367350.html?thread=2381302#t2381302). It's PERFECT!!

John finds them while he is looking for the woollen blanket Sherlock told him he keeps in the bedroom cabinet. John is cold - the living room radiator is broken yet again - and since Sherlock hasn’t been very specific as to the location of the blanket, John finds himself opening and closing the cabinet doors randomly, looking for it.

They’re in the lower compartment, all neatly arranged. They’re pretty - probably a family heirloom - John thinks for a moment, then he notices that something is off. He reaches in and takes one of the little figurines out to take a better look.

John suddenly feels a different kind of chill.

The china doll looks perfectly normal on first glance - a woman in a white Victorian dress holding a fan. But on closer inspection John sees the red on the fan’s edge, the jagged cut in the woman’s neck, porcelain-paint blood running down the woman’s neck and seeping into the white of her dress.

He takes out another figurine, this one of a woman in a green dress, dancing. What appeared to be chestnut-coloured hair now turns out to be her brain. Fine droplets of red paint are running down the woman’s face.

Every single one of the dolls turns out to be in some way hurt, maimed or disemboweled while still pulling their perfectly smiling faces. John wonders what kind of statement they are supposed to make. He also wonders why Sherlock has them. And if there actually was a point to Donovan’s constant warnings.

A shuffling sound behind him shakes John out of his reverie. He stands up and turns, still holding one of the figurines. Sherlock is standing in the doorway, looking at him with an unreadable expression on his face.

“It’s the top left compartment.” Sherlock says, his voice carefully neutral.

“Ah,” John says. He bends down and and puts the armless woman back where she had been. Then he gets the blanket and goes back to the living room. Sherlock watches him the whole time, but neither of them says anything.

\-------

John can’t stop thinking about them and yet he is reluctant to ask. He wants to know where they come from, who made them and what they mean to Sherlock. He wants to know if they are important to him in some way or if they are just left-overs from a case, put away and half-forgotten. Funnily enough, he never actually worries about whether this means something really is terribly wrong with Sherlock. Maybe he should be thinking about what that says about his own psyche.

It’s Sherlock who brings them up again, over dinner, three days later.

“I made them.”

John keeps chewing his roast.

“I was twelve. It freaked out my governess.”

John suppresses a smile. “Why’d you keep them?”

“They’re good pieces of work. I would display them, but they seem to put off potential clients.”

John laughs. “I can’t imagine why.”

Sherlock smiles back. “You’re not worried.” It’s a statement, not a question, John notices.

John shrugs. “You’ve not tried to kill me yet, I assume you’re not going to start just because I discovered your figurine collection.”

“People have killed for less.”

“Yes, but you’re not people.”

Sherlock acknowledges this fact with another smile, looking rather pleased - either with John or with himself or maybe just with the world at large for once.

They finish the meal in amicable silence.

\---------

John sees it in a charity shop as he’s walking down Old Compton Street. It’s perfect and he doesn’t even think much about it, just steps in and buys it. It’s a bit more tricky to find a shop that sells the right kind of paint, but now that he’s got the figurine, he’s not about to give up. It’s a crazy idea, he knows, but he just can’t help it. He wants to know how it works.

He’s been looking at the figurines again and again, when Sherlock is out. The more he sees of them, the less creepy they seem. They’re beautiful pieces of art - objectively speaking - their injuries worked with anatomically correct details.

John’s grandmother used to have a collection of china kittens and it was drilled into him and his sister to never touch them, lest they may break. Sherlock’s girls, though, they’re different. John isn’t afraid to touch them, to take them out and study them. Sometimes he even has the urge to play with them, but resists. There are some things a grown man shouldn’t do. But the fact remains that there is a strange beauty to the dolls. Somehow, their brokenness makes them appear less fragile.

\------------

When John comes home, Sherlock is half-lying in his armchair, watching TV. He glances at John, at the plastic bag he’s carrying. “Dinner?”

“No. But it’s for you.” John holds out the bag.

Something in his tone must give him away, because Sherlock suddenly sits straighter in the chair and looks at him with keen interest.

He reaches for the bag and looks inside. John bites his lip, waits and wonders if he’s just done something very stupid.

The smile that appears on Sherlock’s face tells him he hasn’t. He holds up the figurine - a woman in a light blue dress, sitting on a chair, one leg crossed over the other and her hands clasped around her knee.

“There’s a small crack in the neck,” John says, “But I figured that’s not such a problem.”

Sherlock nods. “It’s perfect. But the paint is useless.”

John’s face falls. “Oh.”

“Not to worry, though. I still have a set of proper porcelain varnish somewhere. We’ll use that.”

\----------  
\----------

John has gone very still, now that Sherlock has stopped trying to get him to help with the work. At first, Sherlock had thought that John wanted to know how to transform a doll, but it became clear very quickly that he really just wanted to watch Sherlock work.

Sherlock can feel John’s eyes on him, all attention focused on the small movements of Sherlock’s fingers as he takes off the doll’s head, fills the holes with tiny bits of self-drying modelling clay and starts painting it. The head he carefully glues upside down between the figurine’s outstretched arms.

It’s a lot harder to work in such detail with grown-up fingers, but Sherlock’s had practice with delicate equipment, so it’s not impossible. Strangely enough, having John watch isn’t distracting him at all, even though he keeps part of his attention focused on John while he works.

Neither of them have spoken for over an hour and the only sound in the room is the quiet hum of the fridge in the corner and the occasional hitch in John’s breathing. Sherlock knows that hitch, knows what it means and it’s fascinating.

It’s taken Sherlock the last half hour to work out that whenever he needs to focus on an especially tricky part, John seems to get more aroused.

He experiments with sticking the tip of his tongue out while painting a vertebra and John shifts minutely on his chair. Licking his lips while carefully renewing the red varnish on the paint brush earns him a small gasp. It’s not so easy to keep his own physical responses in check, but Sherlock’s had practice.

He entertains a short fantasy - sweeping everything off the desk, grabbing John, bending him over the tabletop and having him then and there - just to take the edge off. He’s tempted, but this little game is much more interesting. It’s probably the best foreplay Sherlock’s ever had and it’s not like he can’t finish this _and_ have John later.

By the rate of his breathing, John won’t last much longer. Sherlock decides to see how long he can draw it out.

Maybe he even gets to finish the doll.

 

The End


End file.
